Thursday, January 23, 2014

Getting Rid of Shattsworth...The First Time

I wasn't really very nice when I
confronted Shattsworth about making me feed him while he sat on a
stockpile of tasty grub. He was apologetic and offered to cook
dinner. He said he'd bring it to my camp, a statement I found suspicious in the following days. I took Maya back to my camp and fed her the fish. If I gave
her two fish, she would eat them whole. When I gave her more than
that, she would only eat the heads, saving the rest for later. This
led me to believe there is something good in fish heads that dogs
know about.

We had beef stew, mashed potatoes,
green beans, and red cool aid. Ah, flavors. Jeff kept yammering about
the beans and the correct way to accent the words. “Do you say
GREEN beans, of green BEANS.” Throughout the meal he kept saying it
in different ways. After dinner he tossed me a twinkie. It had been a
long time since I had eaten like that and it was almost worth it to
have been fishing for him.

Then he started asking if I'd eat Maya
if I was hungry, or if I'd eat people. Then he told me he had a 14
year old girl tied up in his van, and quickly said he was kidding. I
made him show me. There was something really wrong with this dude.
There was a story here, lurking behind his weaselly persona. I was
very curious to learn what his deal was. Was he hiding like me? Was
he dangerous, or just damaged?

I asked if he'd ever been to jail. He
said he spent the last couple of years until he was eighteen in
kiddie prison in Indiana. He related that when he got out, he split
for Arizona. We shared jail stories. His were mostly about smearing
shit on the walls of his cell and throwing balls of it at the guards.
He refused to tell me what he had done to get locked up.

He pulled out a bong and while I
scraped the resin out to smoke he told me again how he would make it
up to me someday for helping him and for smoking all his stash alone
in the van. He said without me he'd probably be dead. While he was being amenable, I enlisted an agreement from
him to help me move camp the next morning. Alone, I would have to
make two trips.

My plan was to move to the south end of
the lake temporarily, to organize and prepare to continue my journey and ditch the nutcase.
The Tonto Forest had reopened when the rain came. I had no more
excuses to remain at Bear Canyon. West on the rim road, just past the
fire tower, was a little known path dropping down to Tonto Creek
called the See Canyon Trail. Mike, the watcher in the tower, had told
me it was the best kept secret on the Rim and the fastest way down.
It would save me a long waterless hike back to the Washington Trail I
had originally planned to use to descend.

I figured I'd ditch Shatts for the
south of the lake for a day or two, then move to the trail head. From
there, I would move to the Highline Trail halfway down, and on to Tonto
Creek and southward. It would be warmer on the Tonto, and I could
kill some time there on the way down to Roosevelt Lake. It would be a
couple of months before it cooled off to a comfortable temperature at
Roosevelt. The creek was known to be a good trout stream in the
north, hopefully it would provide other options in the south. Where there is water, there is food.

As we were discussing my plans, a guy
drove up and asked if we could give him a hand with his camper. He
had a hard sided pop up, and the gears had stripped and he needed
help holding it up while he released the supports so It wouldn't jam
crashing down. We happily complied and he gave us a few beers and a
tub of macaroni salad. He said to eat the salad soon, as it had been
in his cooler a few days. He said by soon he meant now.

He was another odd one, and from
Indiana like myself and Jeff. He kept remarking on the size of Maya's
genitals and teats. Jeff asked him for a ride to Payson and back,
which he of course declined, but was able to use a pair of needle
nose pliers I had and crimp the leak in Jeff's radiator. It was while
he was doing this that I learned how the radiator was damaged.

Shattsworth had chosen to replace the
mechanical fan on his water pump with an electric fan mounted to the
radiator. He scavenged the fan at a junk yard and it didn't fit right
so he held it in place with zip ties. On the way up the highway, the
zip ties melted and the fan cut his radiator. With the temporary
mend, Jeff should be able to make it to Payson. He opted to stick
around, fearful to drive with the jankity repair.

The next morning I packed up my camp
and true to his word, he helped me move to the south of the lake. On
the way there I was startled by a snake I almost stepped on that had
two heads and let out a girlie scream that Shattswell thought was
tremendously funny. He kept saying he couldn't believe that Mike
West, the great outdoorsman was scared of a little snake. I wasn't
scared, it startled me. AND IT HAD TWO HEADS! It
was just a garter snake. It had a red stripe along it's side and the
two heads forked out from the body about three or four inches back.
It was probably only about sixteen or eighteen inches long.

Shattsworth
left me at my new camp, and I was relieved to be rid of him. That
evening, after I had set up, four high school aged boys came and
camped right across from me. They were up all night hollering and
drinking and playing poker. They had a sex doll propped up at a camp
table where they played. Occasionally, they shouted rude things at me
across from their camp. They were naked and I couldn't tell if they were simulating sex
acts with the doll or actually doing it. I didn't sleep until they
left in the morning, and of course they left a mess for me to clean
up. They also left an oil lamp hanging in a tree. Score!

I woke
that afternoon with gut wrenching cramps. I threw up until I was
empty and then dry heaved for a while. I tried to drink some water
but repeated the cycle of vomiting and heaving. I thought I would
turn myself inside out. The spasms didn't subside for days and I had
a splitting headache. I thought I might die. It was a good thing I
had water and dog food, because I couldn't have fished or fetched
water. I wondered if the macaroni salad was bad, but thought it more
likely that Shattsworth poisoned me with bad water or shit in the
stew. Looking back, I wasn't there when he cooked the meal and plated
it. I remembered how he sent me away while he cooked and that remark about "hamburger" in his cooler, and all those other stories he had told me about his vengeful and fecal loving
nature.

On the
morning of the second day I heard somebody poking through my camp and
looked out to see him there. I asked if he was sick, and he wasn't.
That ruled out the macaroni salad. I asked if he fed me untreated
water in the Kool Aid and he denied that too. I told him I knew he
did something and he should be glad I was doubled over in agony, or
I'd kick his ass. In my delirium I may have told him I'd kill him if
he was still in the forest when I got better. He looked guilty, but
he always looked guilty.

After
he left, I was lucid enough to remember the benadryl in my first aid
stash. The next day I was able to keep some water down. By evening I
felt much better, but weak. On the fourth day after I fell ill, Maya
and I hiked to the north side of the lake to interrogate Shattsworth
some more and see if he needed his ass kicked.

We crested the hill
above the lake just in time to see an LEO truck, with the cop lights
flashing, disappear down Forest road 89. Shattsworth was gone. I
wondered if he was arrested. I didn't figure I would ever know, I
couldn't really just walk up to a ranger and ask. I returned to camp
relieved, but I didn't know I hadn't seen the last of Shattsworth.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Google+ Badge

About Me

I was arrested for possession of LSD in 1992 and threatened with a 42 year sentence. I split and spent the next fifteen years as a fugitive. The last five years I lived in the forests of Arizona. These are essays about some adventures I had during my journey to freedom .